“Barranquismo” it´s not Canyoning; is a word that in our region has a unique meaning. It is the way in which the self-taught artist Efrén Fernández Varón (1938) called his art and made it known to us. A sculptural technique on earth that looks out onto a space from a ravine lookout point, made with spade and “recatón” (a kind of shovel to make holes in the ground) with which figures are made, almost all characteristics of pre-Columbian cultures, which are then covered with cement and sand passed through water. Thus, what was in ancient times a form of indigenous expression is today an important landmark of urban art in our city of Armenia and some other sites of the Department (state) of Quindío.

Fernandez’s works are only found in this part of Colombia; The elaboration of its murals is slow and wasteful. In the ravines, an ideal of the mural is molded, which is then sculpted, removing pieces of land from the ravine, until achieving figures, between fantastic and real, as well as flora, fauna and customs that refer to Quindianity, but also to the coffee and peasant landscape. For the particular input or raw material for the development of their works; since they are exposed to the elements and are simply covered with a small layer of cement; many have already disappeared.

There are only a few photographic records of them and a few have survived the passage of time and some attention from the authorities for their conservation.

The “Barranquismo” of the Family Park of Montenegro is his last artistic and sculpted realization in 1996, thus becoming the greatest testimony of his work. It has all the components of an everyday set and has become the best graphic of his.